


The Citadel Again

by vonnegutandcats



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, F/M, Gen, Harry Potter References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 15:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1947297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vonnegutandcats/pseuds/vonnegutandcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After talking with the Catalyst, with her time running out, Shepard has to make a choice. </p>
<p>Based on the chapter "The Forest Again" from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Citadel Again

“The paths are open, but you have to choose,” the Catalyst said, stepping back slightly.

Shepard swayed on her feet, hand still pressed to her side, slick with blood. She understood now that she was not supposed to survive. Her job was to end the cycle, no matter the cost. The civilizations of the galaxy could heal and see what they were capable of, without being cut down arbitrarily.

She felt her heart pounding fiercely in her chest. How strange that in this place, with more wounds than she could count, and then end less than a hundred yards away, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping her alive. There was the faint tingling under her skin as her cybernetics tried to repair the damage. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for as she walked the path to make that choice? To give up everything for what? The lesser of three evils?

Fear trickled down her spine as she stood, swaying, one hand clutching the pistol, the other trying to get some purchase and put pressure against the wound in her side. Would it hurt, to die? Every battle, every wound that could’ve been her last, she’d never really thought about being dead.

Even after Cerberus had rebuilt her, she never looked back to frantic moments as her air hissed out of the breaches in her hardsuit and she spun away from the SR1 into the cold emptiness of space. She never let her mind probe into those two years of blackness. In case there _was_ something there for her to remember, she’d stopped herself. During that last attack everything had happened so quickly; it had been a blur of putting fires out, getting the crew in life pods, getting to Joker in the cockpit. There was no time to be afraid. Her will to live, to escape, to get back to the job and help people, had always been so much stronger than her fear of death.

Here and now, on the besieged Citadel and with the Catalyst watching her quietly, wearing that dead little boy’s face, she knew that this time there would be no rebuild, no Lazarus Project. Yet it did not occur to her to try to escape, to try to persuade or bargain her way out of this. It was over, she knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself: making one of the choices she could barely wrap her mind around, the sacrifice, the knowledge that it could only be she herself with this power, this burden.

If only she’d died earlier. On Tuchanka, curing the Krogan of the genophage that had burdened them for centuries. In the Coup, protecting the Council from Cerberus. She’d have preferred if the end had come putting herself between a civilian and harm. She even envied Ashley’s death, destroying Saren's base. This cold-blooded walk to a decision that should never be in the hands of one person, this would require a different kind of bravery. She felt her hands tremble slightly and and she tried to still them, even though there was no one there to see.

Slowly, very slowly, she took a step forward and as she did so she felt more alive and aware of her living body than ever before. She could feel each of her muscles contract and release to move her forward, every drop of blood that slid down her arm to splash on the pristine white floor, the bruise forming on her cheekbone, the salty smear of sweat and blood on her face. Why had she never appreciated what a miracle she was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? And it would all be gone. Her breath came slow and deep, her mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were her eyes.

The Crucible not being the easy solution they’d all hoped and expected; it didn’t come as much of a surprise. One thing she’d learned about the universe was that nothing was ever easy. Sacrifice was necessary. What affronted was that her sacrifice would buy such an imperfect outcome.

To control the Reapers, replace the Catalyst and remain here, forever. And to have to accept the atrocities they’d inflicted on organic life, cycle after cycle, to use them and turn a blind eye to the blood that would then be on her hands.

To synthesize organics and synthetics. True, the war would end. But how could anyone make such a decision for the countless billion lives in the galaxy, to change them all irreversibly?

Or to destroy the Reapers, and along with them, the Geth and every AI that existed, including EDI. EDI who had just told her (was it only hours ago? It felt like years.) that now she felt fully alive, and it was at least partially thanks to Shepard. And to end the peace that had bloomed between the Quarians and the life they’d created.

But she’d have to chose. Every second she was here, firing nerves, steady lungs and pounding heart, a hundred—a thousand, lives ended on Earth below her and in space all around.

And yet choosing was the only way to end the cycle, end the destruction, end the misery and horror and pain of this war. Whoever had created the Catalyst had done the job well, made the cost of using it almost impossibly high, but here and now, Shepard would see that the price was paid.

She thought of the bodies she’d stumbled past to get to the beam, of Anderson’s slumped form somewhere on that platform below her, of the Normandy flying, dodging Reaper fire in orbit around Earth and for a moment she could hardly breathe. The war was impatient.

There was still so much more to do, still so many who needed her. The Krogan would be breeding, and as much as Wrex would try to keep them in check, some of the other clan leaders would insist on getting their revenge. The Quarians and Geth, with their new, uneasy peace that was so fragile and could break so easily. The refugees from every planet and colony, wounded, homeless, leaderless.

And she wouldn’t be there to help. To keep everyone’s minds clear enough to see the big picture, how much they were capable of accomplishing when they worked together. But she had to hope that they’d learned. Bringing everyone together had helped, it would be easier to keep things going. Leaders would emerge, they would know what needed to be done. Hackett understood, and her crew would help.

Like rain on a cold window, these thoughts pattered against the hard surface of the incontrovertible truth, which was that she was to die. _I must die._ It must end.

The crew of the Normandy seemed a long way away, lightyears and decades ago. There was no way to get a message to them, to signal them somehow, and they wouldn’t have been able to help anyway. This was her choice, her part to play.

She tried to straighten herself, and took a shuffling step forward, heart leaping against her ribs like a frightened bird. Perhaps it was trying to fit a lifetime’s worth of beats into what time she had left.

Her footstep echoed in the cavernous room, and she looked back for a moment, one last attempt to see another way out. Just to see if there was one, but the platform ended abruptly shortly past where the lift had deposited her, where the Catalyst still stood silent.

Shepard faced forward again, and saw an Alliance ship speed past, swerving and banking to avoid a half dozen of the little drones hot on its tail. She looked further out into the void, hoping for a momentary glimpse of the Normandy, feeling that she would have given all the time remaining to her for just one last look at it. But then, would she have ever have had the strength to stop looking? It was better like this.

She took another clumsy step. A Turian cruiser drifted past, guns firing a blazing line toward a Reaper that clutched at a Quarian ship. Her eyes closed as the face she’d been trying so hard not to think about loomed in her mind. The pain in his eyes as he leaned on Tali’s shoulder, reaching out to her. His voice when he’d said “I ...love you, too,” clasping her wrist to keep her hand on his face for just a second longer. The way his shoulders had slumped when she backed away, armor on fire, and the Normandy lifted into the air.

She tried to stop them, to focus back on the paths in front of her, but more images came flooding back. That last kiss at the base, his arms around her, “Forgive the insubordination.” The promise that they’d be together, however things played out. Earlier memories came too, no matter how she tried to stop them. Dancing at the casino in front of the crowd, dancing at her apartment, completely alone. Shooting bottles at the top of the Presidium, him yelling that this was his favorite spot on the Citadel, getting back in the sky car and making damn sure it was her favorite too. Finding him on Menae, feeling like some of the weight was lifted off her shoulders, his hands gripping hers. Being held after Aratoht, for a long time. Moments she couldn’t even place in time; his arm over her waist in the morning, his three fingers running through her hair, watching him completely absorbed in working the control panel in the main battery, his laugh, his blue eyes locked on hers.

Shepard breathed in deep, closed her eyes for a few precious second. She didn’t try to push Garrus from her mind, that would’ve been impossible, but she did manage to take a few unsteady steps forward again. It was time.

Ten yards from where the walkway forked, she paused as lights began to swirl around her, and take shape.  Four figures were appearing, Shepard blinked and shook her head slightly as Anderson, Mordin, Ashley and Thane stepped forward, the same proud look on each of their faces.

They looked like holograms, but less digital, with faint silver flashes of light surrounding them.  Mordin looked younger than she had ever seen him, but wearing his same lab coat. Ashley looked the same in her slightly outdated blue Alliance uniform, young, determined, but her hair was loose around her shoulders. Thane looked slightly younger, healthier, but the same purposeful grace to his movements. Anderson was unwounded, unwrinkled, much more how he looked back when he'd been captain of the Normandy. He came closer, looking into her face, his smile the widest of them all.

"You’ve been so brave.”

Shepard couldn’t speak. Her eyes roved over their faces and felt a small measure of her strength return to her.

“Almost there,” Mordin said. “Proud of you, Shepard.”

“Does it hurt?” The question had escaped her lips without her meaning to speak it.

“Dying? Don’t you remember the last time?” Ashley asked with a small laugh. “No, not at all. Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”

“And it will be over,” Thane said, straightening and clasping his hands at the small of his back.

“I didn’t want you to die,” Shepard blurted out, before she could stop herself. “Any of you. I’m sorry Anderson, I couldn’t stop it, I tried—” She looked at Thane, “—right when you and Kolyat were finally—”

“I am sorry too,” Thane said. “Sorry I will not see him grow into a man, see him raise children of his own. But he knows why I died, and I think he understands. I was trying to make a galaxy in which he could have a future at all.”

Out in the battlefield a ship exploded, torn apart by a Reaper’s beam, so close to the Citadel Shepard almost thought she should be able to hear it. She looked back to the four of them, standing around her, “Are you really here? How am I seeing you?”

Mordin shook his head, “Wrong question. Real or not does not matter. Nor does how. Why is all that is important.”

“I don’t want to do this,” Shepard whispered, more to herself than them. “None of this is right.”

“Had to be you, Commander,” Mordin sniffed, “someone else might have gotten it wrong.”

She felt one corner of her mouth lift briefly and then nodded. “Thank you,” she said, straightening as best she could. The pistol that had felt so heavy just moments before, seemed to lighten, and her head felt clearer. “I feel better with you here. More ...myself. Will you stay?”

“For as long as you need us, skipper."

The fork where the walkway diverged was only a few yards ahead, and now her body and mind felt oddly disconnected, her limbs moving forward without conscious instruction, as if she were the passenger, not driver, in the body she was about to leave. The dead figures standing in almost the same spot they had appeared, felt much more real to her now than the countless bodies in the ships that still flew around, than the ones struggling on the Earth below. She trudged forward, slower than she’d ever remembered walking in her life. At the intersection, she paused only for a second before veering to the right. Walking was still difficult, slow and painful, but her feet were steadily carrying her closer to the structure all the time.

Raising her arm unsteadily, she aimed at the structure that seemed to be filled with red light, and her finger tightened on the trigger. One last time, she thought of Garrus. How he was there for her every time she needed him. His searing blue eyes. The feel of his mouth plates against her lips—

Shepard fired. The glass only cracked, so she pulled the trigger again. And again. Then she was striding forward, finding some last reserves of strength and speed, shooting over and over. It needed  to happen now, quickly, while she could still stand, before she betrayed fear, reconsidered—

She saw the glass break open and a flash of red light, and everything was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> The thought struck me, what if Shepard had a Resurrection Stone moment while she was on the Citadel that last time. Don't uh, ask me how it works. Some lines are lifted straight from Harry Potter 7. Special shout out and thanks to my beta Alice (kinneys)! This is my first fanfic ever and I don't really know what I'm doing but thanks for reading


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